The Tunnel

I imagined her. As her long, golden hair hugged her shoulders in the dim light. Not unlike the sight of a young lover wasping around her figure. The sweat hung to her face, as her mouth carved gentle words into my ears.

I crafted her in my mind, recreating and shaping every curve and indent.

I heard her soft, loving whispers release from her body secrets of the past...

Pain: blazing pain, like a spike from a needle, as if my soul was no longer permitted to hold peace. I was wisked away from my dream... returning to cold, hard concrete ground. Lying on my back as the freezing air crawled up my fingertips. I watched as blood leaked from my body.

I was no longer in control,

My memories grasped my mind once more,

My first ice cream,

My first kiss,

My first roller coaster,

It unleashed the limits of my evaporating consciousness, let me free-fall in the chambers of my mind.

And, quite like a roller coaster,

I was now only a witness of my own death.

I could not feel pain, only a silent glow as angels descended upon me.

She uttered a single word to me... my judgement. Every wrong accumulated over the years, like a growing cancer in my body. Every sin, conflict, and guilt, simplified into one swift judgement.

Suddenly, my world slipped back into darkness, as the chambers of my mind that remained screamed and begged for reason as the burning chaos enclosed my decaying shell.

A thick, slimy substance enveloped my body...

The body that screamed in the darkness.

Darkness so deep it only left me with a glow of self-knowing, and wisdom slowly overtook me.